Online Publications: Who Benefits?

This is more evident now than it ever has been before. Online speculative fiction publications easily number in the hundreds, including many new publications looking for worthy submissions and just itching to get up and running (e.g. GigaNotoSaurus and Smash Cake Magazine). Just to illustrate: to date, Duotrope lists166 fledgling markets, or those markets with a publication history of less than six months.

Even the Philippines, horribly late in the technological race, generally speaking, has two active online publishing entities: Rocket Kapre, which has published Usok 1 and the charity anthology Ruin and Resolve; and Estranghero Press, which has published the anthologies The Farthest Shore (secondary worlds) and Demons of the New Year (horror). As in the rest of the world, online publications appear to be a growth industry, as evidenced by the upcoming launch of the POC Review (which is not genre-bound) and ( a bit farther into the future) the online version of the Philippine Genre Stories.

So: why an online publication? From the viewpoint of a publisher, one factor to consider is that online publishing is cheap. Compared to a print publication, an online publication is easy to set up that it can actually begin – and even remain – a one-man endeavor. For example, the now defunct (and quite brilliant) Lone Star Stories listed only one person under “Staff” – publisher and editor Eric Marin.

To start an online publication, all you need is a web-publishing platform (Expanded Horizons, for example, publishes using Wordpress), good internet connection, submission guidelines, and time that can be devoted to going through the pile of submissions. Compare this with the money you’ll have to shell out in order to produce your first print issue, factoring in the cost of printing, distribution, and the like.